GUILTY

(GENETIC GENEALOGY SOLVES ANOTHER CRIME)

I've exposed another criminal using genetic genealogy.  This time, it was 93 years after the crime.  I've included two versions of the story.  First, a complex detailed version that includes DNA and research data.  This will make another great genealogy tutorial for those of you who really want to get deep into it.  I've also included a simplified summary for anyone who just wants to read an interesting story without all the DNA related details.  Click here to jump to the summary now if you'd like.

This case was quite interesting and tricky because I had almost no good family trees to help me.  Centimorgan numbers played a big part in solving this.  I'll leave out last names because some of this is a bit disturbing, and the families may not feel too good about it.  You'll see what I mean if you follow this to the end.

I began by helping a woman named Sally.  She was adopted and with the help of her niece, Beverly, she was able to find out who her birth mother's family was.  Her father however, was much more difficult to find.  I was asked to help.  Sally had very large DNA matches and this seemed like it was going to be a piece of cake.  There was a problem though.  None of the large DNA matches had trees with a common ancestor in them.  These people did not know each other.  After I looked at weaker matches, it looked as if none of Sally's close relatives knew their real families.  They all had one thing in common though, they were all from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Let's take a look at how everyone matched up.  Keep in mind, the only two people here who know each other are Sandra and Donald.  They are father and daughter.  I know that Sandra is a DNA match to Sally on her father's side of the family.  Donald is matching on his father, Arnold's, side of the family.  Aaron is matching on his father, David's, side of the family.  Everyone here has a paternal connection.  No one is matching to anyone else's mother's side.  I've included some deceased people on the list as well.  They haven't submitted DNA, but they are important to the story.  Centimorgan numbers are shown for all DNA matches.

SALLY - Born 1947
Adopted
DNA matches:
Sally and Donald 1818
Sally and Sandra 1021
Sally and Aaron 542
Sally and Amber 485

DONALD - Born 1936
DNA matches:
Donald and Sandra 3447
Donald and Sally 1818
Donald and Amber 571
Donald and Aaron 435

SANDRA - Born 1968
DNA matches:
Sandra and Donald 3447
Sandra and Sally 1021
Sandra and Amber 258
Sandra and Aaron 210

AMBER - Born 1986
DNA matches:
Amber and Aaron 949
Amber and Sally 485
Amber and Donald 571
Amber and Sandra 258

AARON - Born 1988
DNA matches:
Aaron and Amber 949
Aaron and Sally 542
Aaron and Donald 435
Aaron and Sandra 210

GORDON (1933-1982)
He was Aaron's grandfather.  His mother was Winifred, shown below.  These relationships are confirmed.

MARGARET (1926-1967)
Margaret was Sally's biological mother.  Sally was given up when she was born in 1947.

RUTH (1913-1995)
Ruth was Sandra's grandmother and Donald's mother.  DNA matches to Ruth's family confirm this is correct.

WINIFRED (1917-1984)
Winifred was Aaron's great-grandmother.  DNA matches to Winifred's family confirmed this.  She was also the mother of Gordon shown above.

I'll explain something about Amber before we start analyzing this.  She had a family tree posted but I later found out she is also adopted.  She had posted her adopted tree.  I highly recommend that people don't do that.  It leads to confusion for anyone looking at it.  One option would be to label your tree, "Adopted Tree," so everyone knows.  I eventually found her bio parents for her, but they are not really important to this story.  It's a more distant relationship that we need to figure out.  We now know Amber's tree is not a bio tree so it won't help us.

So, how is everyone related?  The numbers alone can lead you to only a couple possibilities.  Before reading further, see what you can come up with based only on the numbers.  Then, look at the trees below for Aaron, Sandra and Donald.  I'm only showing the paternal sides of the trees.  Sandra's mother and Aaron's mother are not important here.  I mentioned earlier, it's the paternal relationships we are interested in.  As you can see, there's no common ancestors.  Why?

Sandra and Aaron's Trees

I needed to figure out Donald and Sally's relationship first.  He could only be her half-brother or uncle with a DNA match of 1818cM.  Donald had no brothers who would be the right age to be Sally's father.  This eliminates him as her uncle.  He is her half-brother.  So, you would think Arnold (Donald's father shown in the tree above) must be Sally's father too, right?  When reviewing the DNA matches, I could see that neither Donald or Sally had matches to the families of Andrew and Mary (also shown in the tree above).  This led me to believe Arnold probably isn't Donald's real father.  We now have two people with unknown fathers and their real fathers appear to be the same man.

Next, I took a close look at the ages and generations.  Since we know Sandra is Donald's daughter, she is one generation younger than Sally.  Let's look at Aaron's tree now.  Everyone seems to be about twenty to thirty years younger than in Sandra's tree.  You can't always determine generation by age, but it's a safe bet that Aaron is a generation younger than Sandra.  That would mean Aaron is two generations younger than Sally and Donald.  Here's where it gets a little difficult to explain...

If Aaron is two generations younger, then his grandparent is in the same generation as Sally and Donald.  Take a moment and make sure you understand that part first.  If all this is correct, then the father of the grandparent I just mentioned (Aaron's great-grandfather) could be Sally and Donald's father, right?  Look at the tree.  It could be Harold or James.  I expected to find someone in their families who matched up with Sally and Donald, but no!  Aaron has DNA matches connected to the families of Winifred, James and Helen, but NOT Harold.  This seemed to indicate that Gordon also never knew who his real father was.  Examine the trees and make sure you follow all that before continuing.

Could this all be true?  Rather than finding Sally's father, I seem to have discovered two more people, Donald and Gordon, who don't know who their father really was.  It's time to take a close look at those centimorgan numbers.  What do the number's say?  Do they support this theory?  Luckily, in this case I had very clear numbers to work with.  Nothing was unusual or out of range.  The numbers are perfect.  See if you can come up with an explanation for all the numbers.  What is everyone's relationship to each other?  Click the button below to reveal the correct answer.

Do you understand this so far?  We are now looking for the father of three people, Sally, Donald and Gordon.  The father of all of them is the same unknown man and they all have different mothers.  The numbers and matches make this undeniable.   For example, what if we said, the brother of the unknown man could be Gordon's father.  It would change Sally's relationship to Amber and Aaron to first cousin twice removed and the numbers are now out of range.

For those of you who are new to understanding centimorgans, you might be thinking, "Gordon is dead and hasn't submitted DNA, how can you possibly know that his father is not correct."  Remember, we do have the DNA of two of his descendants, Aaron and Amber.  They have about 25% of Gordon's DNA.  Understanding centimorgans can lead to you knowing the relationships to the other DNA matches:  Sally, Donald and Sandra.  Also, as I mentioned before, there's no other DNA matches connected to the man Gordon thought was his father.  Just to make sure we're all clear on this, let's go over everyone's family so far...

Sally
Mother: MargaretFather: The Unknown Man

Donald
Mother: RuthFather: The Unknown Man

Gordon
Mother: WinifredFather: The Unknown Man

Sandra
Grandmother: RuthGrandfather: The Unknown Man

Aaron
Great-Grandmother: WinifredGreat-Grandfather: The Unknown Man

Amber
Great-Grandmother: WinifredGreat-Grandfather: The Unknown Man

As you can see, everyone now has a common ancestor (The Unknown Man).  The centimorgan numbers all work out for this to be true.  I had no doubt at this point that I had the relationships correct, but could I find the unknown man and prove it?  The DNA alone is proof of the relationships, but is there a name of a man connected to these people?

I was given access to everyone's DNA match list, but I focused on Sally's first.  I knew I would have to go deep into the list to figure this out.  There were no big matches to anyone else.  I noticed a connection to a family named Epps.  I wanted to find Sally's grandparents or great-grandparents and work backwards to find her father.  Everything came back to the Epps family only though.  It seemed like a family was missing from the match list.

I suspected that one of Sally's grandparents was the child of George Epps and Anna Ashbaugh.  The next step would be to find out who all of their children married and see if there were any matches to one of their spouses.  Sally's grandparents could be an Epps and a spouse of that Epps.  If they had a son, that son could be Sally's father.  Donald's DNA list had all the same matches of course since Sally is his half-sister.  Aaron, Amber and Sandra's lists did as well, but the numbers were lower since they are from younger generations.

One of Sally's possible grandparents was George and Anna's son, George Epps Jr.  I was finding no DNA matches to any spouse of George Jr. though.  I noticed that no one on the Ancestry site seemed to have any information about George's wife, Laura Joyce.  I also noticed, this entire family line died out.  George and Laura only had three children, and one grandchild.  There are no living relatives on this line.

Here's an important tip...  Sometimes, lack of DNA matches can reveal the answer.  Since this family line ended, it totally explains why there's no close DNA matches to anyone in the Epps family.  It also helps support my theory that all of Sally's big matches don't know their real families.  They are all secretly part of this Epps family line.  We need more proof though and we still need to find the mystery man.  Take a look at these clippings I found...

Obituaries can be a great source of information.  Laura's maiden name was Joyce and she was married twice.  Her second husband was James Boyd.  She had three children with her first husband, George Epps.  Their children were, daughter Minota and two sons, Edward and Albert.  She also has a brother named Albert living in England.  Her brother's obit is a series of quotes from family members, including one from Laura's daughter in Canada.  Information that seems insignificant can end up being very useful.  Finding out Laura had a brother led to the proof I needed to confirm Laura was Sally's grandmother.  It took some effort, but I found one distant Joyce DNA match to the great-great grandson of Laura's brother, Albert Joyce.  This DNA match had only 23 Centimorgans of shared DNA and is living in England.

This got me thinking...  Why were there so few matches to the Joyce family?  Laura was from Scotland, but seemed to have no relatives from Europe that came to Canada with her.  We only had very distant matches from the UK.  What was she doing in Canada?  There was no record of her brother, parents or cousins ever being there.  Further research led me to find out that Laura was registered as a "British Home Child."  I had never heard of this before.  Genealogy can often lead to an interesting history lesson.  Check this out...

"Between 1869 and 1948, over 100,000 children were relocated from the UK to Commonwealth countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  Often stemming from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken families, these children were largely placed with host families to work as manual laborers and domestic servants.  Many faced severe neglect and exploitation, resulting in a dark chapter in British child emigration."

To learn more about British Home Children, click the image above.  I don't know for sure, but I did some research and I suspect that Laura's mother may have died young and there was no one to care for her.  She was probably orphaned and that's why she was sent to Canada.

Now that I found a DNA match to someone in Laura's family, I was confident the mystery man I was looking for was the son of George Epps and Laura Joyce.  I was getting close.  They had two sons, Edward W. Epps (1906-1970) and Albert H. Epps (1904-1992).  Figuring out which one was correct seemed unlikely.  Luckily, we had a small amount of information about Sally's birth mother.  We knew she was working for Coca Cola in Hamilton around the time Sally was born in 1947.  Sally's niece was also able to get some info from a Hamilton, Ontario city directory.  Take a look below.  We see Albert H. Epps living with his wife Freda in Hamilton in 1946.  Notice his occupation...  Salesman for Coca Cola!

We now know Sally's mother and Albert Epps were not only living in the same town at the same time, they also worked for the same company.  It was really looking like all the research and DNA data had led to the right guy.  There's a problem though.  Do you see it?  Remember, we suspect Albert was the father of three people, Sally, Donald and Gordon.  Go back and look at the mothers of those three people.  We know from DNA matching that the three mothers are correct.  So, what's the problem?

If the information above was all you had, you'd probably say this is all nonsense.  Could the father of all these people really be the same guy?  Remember, DNA doesn't lie.  In this case it's actually really clear.  Maybe there's something else out there that still exists that can tie this all together.  There is!

In 1933 several newspaper articles were printed about Albert Epps.  He was arrested for a "Serious offence."  That's all the papers would say though.  Canadian newspapers did not go into detail about serious offences back then.  I looked it up and found out a serious offence was usually:  Murder, rape, or treason.  I also noticed the date of the first article shown below.  This date was around the time Gordon was conceived.  Then, I found an article from a Toronto paper that got a little more specific which says, "A serious charge against a 15-year-old girl."  That 15-year-old girl was Winifred.  There was no DNA back then to prove her baby was his, so he got away with it.  This makes me wonder if Sally's birth mother ever really had a relationship with him, or was she another one of his victims.  Maybe Ruth was as well, or maybe there's more women out there we don't even know about.

Well, there it is!  We now have everything to confirm this is all correct.  The father of Sally, Donald and Gordon is the same man, Albert Henry Epps.  He's also Aaron and Amber's great-grandfather and Sandra's grandfather.  It was really surprising to find out he had a child with an underage girl, but we now have proof he did.  We also have proof he was in the right place at the right time, and most importantly, we have DNA from his descendants.  There's no question, Albert Epps was the father of these three people, and he was guilty of a serious crime.

SUMMARY

Here's a summary of the whole story for those of you who want to read the short version...  While searching for someone who was looking for their birth parents, I noticed several close relatives on her DNA match list.  These people had no family members in common in their family trees however, and they did not know each other.  After a long search using DNA data I was able to determine that several people on this list did not know who their real father, grandfather or great-grandfather was.  These people all turned out to be descendants of the same man, Albert Epps.

I knew something disturbing happened many years ago for this to be true.  One of the people Albert had a child with was a 15-year-old girl named Winifred.  Amazingly, newspaper articles and other data regarding this case still exist and were found.  There's even articles about his arrest that mention, "A serious charge against a 15-year-old girl."  Albert never went to prison for his crime however.  He was acquitted because of lack of evidence.  There was no DNA back then to prove he did anything wrong.  Other data was found showing that Albert was in the right place at the right time to have children with other women whose descendants are DNA matches.

The end result of all this is, I ended up finding a total of five DNA matches who are secretly descendants of this one man.  This also led to Albert's sexual assault crime being confirmed after 93 years.  The DNA data from some of these people proves they are descendants of both Albert and the young girl.

I've worked on similar cases like this before where a birth parent search ended up leading to a crime being exposed.  These are some of the most interesting cases I've been involved with.  I continue to be amazed at what DNA can do and what can be found after all this time.  It took 93 years, but we can now say without a doubt, Albert Epps was guilty.

REFERENCES
• Obituaries - The Hamilton Spectator Jan 7, 1950 Hamilton Ontario Canada, Evening Post Feb 7, 1951 Bristol England  • British Home Children photo and information - www.britishhomechildren.com and www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/people-and-stories/british-home-children  • Hamilton Ontario city data - Vernon's Hamilton City Directory, Hamilton Public Library  • Crime clippings - The Hamilton spectator Jan 31, 1933, Waterloo Region Record Mar 14, 1933, The Toronto Telegram Mar 13, 1993  • Other photos are royalty free or are AI generated.  No photos of actual people involved in this case were used.

Look for more posts coming soon.